Novel MAP Selection Scheme Using Location History in Hierarchical MIPv6 Networks

In this paper, a novel mobility anchor point (MAP) selection scheme based on location history is proposed for Hierarchical MIPv6 networks. Considering mobile nodes (MNs) moving fast but only within a limited region, a new parameter, called location rate, is defined in our scheme to represent the number of different access routers the MN has previously attached to in unit time on average. A compound variable, consisting of the location rate and some other MN-related parameters, is derived and used to compare with a group of network-related thresholds, so that MAPs with minimum total costs (containing binding update cost and packet tunneling cost) for different MNs could be selected. Simulations with a modified random walk mobility model show that our scheme has good and steady performance for selecting low-cost MAPs in different situations, while other schemes (e.g. furthest, nearest, mobility- based and session-to-mobility ratio based) are only suitable for certain cases. Besides, the use of the compound variable and the group of thresholds simplifies the selection procedure, so MNs don´t need to do any complex calculation of MAPs´ total costs.